Yesterday was both the longest day of the year and the longest day at Wimbledon ever. It was also full of very surprisingly close first round matches for the top mens seeds. World No. 2, Roger Federer, World No. 3 Novak Djokovic and World No. 7 Nikolay Davydenko were all pushed to five sets, before advancing to the second round. Federer came back from a game and two sets to love deficit to defeat 60th world ranked Columbian, Alejandro Falla. In similar fashions, Djokovic came back from a two sets to one deficit to win in five against 68th ranked, Olivier Rochus and Davydenko came back from two sets to love to defeat 95th ranked, Kevin Anderson. In addition, World No. 12, Marin Cilic was defeated by 59th ranked Florian Mayer in straight sets.
Inconsistency at the top of the mens game has really been the trend since this past Australian Open. Roger Federer has not won a title in the seven tournaments that he’s played since winning in Melbourne. Similarly, Novak Djokovic has only made one ATP final this year in ten tournaments played and Andy Murray hasn’t been in a final in his last eight tournaments, since Melbourne. So not counting the Australian Open, out of a combined 26 tournaments that the three of them have played, only Djokovic has a title and that was at a 500 level event in Dubai. This is quite a drought for the numbers 2, 3 and 4 players in the world.
As a result, I believe the Wimbledon title is more wide open this year than it has been since the “Reign of Federer” began in 2004. I’m going out on a limb and predicting that neither Rafael Nadal or Roger Federer will be on the court on July 4th. Instead, I believe it will be Robin Soderling against either Tomas Berdych or Andy Roddick. Hopefully this passing of the guard will be entertaining enough not to be completely overshadowed by the 2008 and 2009 Wimbledon finals, which were a couple of the best matches in the history of tennis.
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